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· The state of emergency imposed last October should be lifted immediately, constitutional human rights safeguards recognized and fully respected, and a clear and reasonable timetable set for holding national elections and returning the country to constitutional rule.
· The Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) should be revoked, as should the January 26, 2000, order requiring Supreme and High Court judges to take an oath to uphold the PCO and the proclamation of emergency. The orders undermine the independence of the judiciary and immunize officials of the military government from prosecution. All fifteen Supreme and High Court judges who were dismissed for failure to take the oath should be reinstated immediately.
· The March 15 Interior Ministry order banning all "political meetings at public places, strikes and processions" should immediately be rescinded. The order is violative of the fundamental rights of expression, association, and assembly, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
· The National Accountability Ordinance should be amended so as to vest powers of arrest, investigation, and prosecution in separate bodies. Persons detained under the ordinance should not be held without charge longer than permitted by the Criminal Procedure Code; once charged, they should have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of their defense. Accountability courts should be empowered to grant bail, as provided for in the Code of Criminal Procedure. The authority to release detainees should rest with the courts, rather than the chairman of the National Accountability Bureau, and the burden of proof at trial should rest with the prosecution, not with the defendant. The automatic prohibition on individuals convicted under the law from holding elected office for twenty-one years should be repealed as a violation of the political rights of those concerned.
· Accountability trials should not be conducted inside the Attock Fort. The army-occupied fort is not readily accessible as a venue to defense counsel or witnesses, nor are there persuasive security reasons for conducting trials there.
· Persons detained in connection with accountability proceedings should under no circumstances be held in military custody.
· The Anti-Terrorism Act should, at a minimum, be amended so as to provide adequate time and facilities for the preparation of a defense; the provision prohibiting the publishing or pasting of handbills should be revoked. As presently drafted, the Act violates international standards of due process as well as the right to free expression.
· Pakistan should ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and enact the necessary reforms to its domestic legislation so as to ensure consistency with the covenant.
· Army monitoring teams should be disbanded. Any monitoring of civilian institutions should be conducted by legally constituted civilian oversight bodies.
· The Local Bodies Elections 2000 plan should be amended to allow political parties to field candidates and campaign on their behalf. The elections should not be conducted on the basis of a separate electorate for religious minorities.
· Former Information Minister Mushahid Hussain, former Petroleum Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, and other persons being illegally detained should be formally charged or released from custody.
· A judicial inquiry should be conducted into the custodial torture of Rana Sanaullah Khan, a member of the suspended Punjab provincial assembly who was arrested in Faisalabad on November 28, 1999. Strict disciplinary action, including criminal prosecution where warranted, should be taken against all officers found to have been responsible. In addition, the charges filed against Sanaullah under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) Ordinance and the Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code, governing sedition, contravene his fundamental right to expression and should immediately be withdrawn.
· Judicial inquiries should also be directed into the other cases of custodial torture, ill-treatment, and illegal detention documented in this report, and into the arrest of Mukhi Namomal, head of the District Hindu Panchayat Committee in Daharki, Sindh, by an army monitoring team on February 17, 2000.
To the International Community
· Donors and trading partners of Pakistan should use every available opportunity to press for implementation of the legal and administrative reforms recommended above; respect for international standards of due process and fair trials; impartial inquiries into, and accountability for, cases of illegal detention and custodial ill-treatment; and the early restoration of democratic government in Pakistan under conditions that are conducive to free and fair elections.
· The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights should visit Pakistan as soon as possible to raise human rights issues with government and judicial authorities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and others, and to press for the immediate lifting of the state of emergency, the release of all those illegally detained, an end to arbitrary and unjust trials and ill-treatment of those in detention, the lifting of the Interior Ministry's ban on political meetings, and protection of the right of free expression.
· Cooperation with the Musharraf administration's extradition requests in connection with cases registered under the National Accountability Ordinance should be contingent on the amendment of the ordinance as outlined above. Countries that have acceded to extradition requests should monitor the treatment of detainees and the conduct of trials through their embassies in Pakistan, with a view to ensuring that international standards relating to the treatment of prisoners, due process, and fair trials are upheld at all times. Extraditing countries should insist on being allowed to send observers to the trials and to visit defendants in their places of detention.
· Governments should refrain from providing technical assistance for anti-corruption trials until Pakistan takes steps to restore the independence of the judiciary and to amend the National Accountability Ordinance.
· Bilateral donors and international lending agencies, including the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, should insist that the government of Pakistan commit itself to an action plan to restore good governance and constitutional rule to Pakistan before they agree to provide any new loans.